looking for the old "Typewriter" widget

December 6, 2004 5:11 PM

AnnoyFilter? Believe it or not, I'm looking for a PC utility that should've gone the way of the MARQUEE tag and animated GIFs. I need to assign a short WAV sound effect to each and every keypress on my PC. If anyone remembers the old "Typewriter" widget on old Macs, that's what I'm looking for. Shareware sites show me stuff from 1998 that costs $19-29, but I'm hoping there's an easier way -- even, a way built into XP (maybe an Accessibility tweak)?
posted by pzarquon to Computers & Internet (11 answers total)

One of my all time favorite programs is noisy keyboard which makes your computer sound like a Royal, complete with a nice "bing!" when you hit return. The program lets you customize your own sounds for the keys, so try that. (unless you need a different sound for each key, in which case that one won't work. Noisy Keyboard only does about three sounds.)
posted by CunningLinguist at 5:31 PM on December 6, 2004

Wow. That was fast. And that'll do nicely! Thanks, CunningLinguist!
posted by pzarquon at 5:46 PM on December 6, 2004

Anyone know of a similar hack for Mac OS X?
posted by Mwongozi at 5:56 PM on December 6, 2004

Does this fit the bill?
posted by CunningLinguist at 6:13 PM on December 6, 2004

I miss the classic Mac OS UI sound themes. I spent hours getting my Tom Waits theme just right.
posted by scarabic at 6:20 PM on December 6, 2004

Noisy keyboard is awesome. But now my wife hates me. And you.
posted by Doohickie at 8:18 PM on December 6, 2004

yup, I'm going to use noisy keyboard until no one can stand being in the room with me while i'm typing. Awesome
posted by puke & cry at 9:47 PM on December 6, 2004

Ooh, I installed that OS X program mentioned above and I'm loving it. I don't like any of the carriage return sounds that came with it or were on the website, though. Anyone have a pointer to a really cool typewriter carriage return sound effect that I can grab?
posted by litlnemo at 10:22 PM on December 6, 2004

That's brilliant, CL.
posted by Vidiot at 10:39 PM on December 6, 2004

http://www.nullsoft.com/free/nbeep/

Justin Frankel's Computer "Enhancer"
posted by blasdelf at 11:01 PM on December 6, 2004

what litlnemo said - i want both a whooosh and a bing!
(this is good)
posted by andrew cooke at 2:42 AM on December 7, 2004